Conventionally, image sensing apparatuses which can record both still images and moving images have been proposed. For example, an image sensing apparatus that integrates a video camera and tape recorder, and can record a moving image and still image on a single tape, and an image sensing apparatus which records a moving image on a tape and records a still image on another recording medium such as memory, are known.
In recent image sensing apparatuses, an image sensing element has a larger number of pixels. However, an optical system including lenses becomes larger with increasing number of pixels of the image sensing element. Such increase in size of the optical system is to achieve an optical resolution corresponding to the increase in the number of pixels, and even when the size of the image sensing area (image size) of the image sensing element remains the same, an optical system must be designed so as to correspond to such multi-pixels. Especially, in still image sensing, an image sensing element which has a high pixel density approaching a silver halide camera has been put into practical applications, and an image sensing apparatus that can record both still and moving images described in the prior art is beginning to adopt such multi-pixel image sensing element.
However, moving images still use the video format such as NTSC that complies with an existing moving image sensing scheme, and such image need not be recorded at such high resolution that exhibits the resolving power of the multi-pixel image sensing element.
Therefore, upon examining an image sensing apparatus which uses a multi-pixel image sensing element and can record both still and moving images, such system can improve the resolution of a still image compared to the conventional image sensing apparatuses, but has a bulky optical system, and has a resolution of a moving image as low as the conventional apparatus.
Furthermore, in a so-called zoom lens as an optical system that can vary the focal length, the size of the optical system increases conspicuously, and such tendency is considerable with increasing variable focal length ratio (zoom ratio).